I understand why they phase roll outs of updates, but I wish that the first wave would be people who cared and chose to manually download the update from the play store. *Then* they could roll up the updates to all of the people who don't follow tech news. I hate having to wait.

The Galaxy Nexus uses TI hardware, and TI exited the ARM business last year. It's unfortunate and all, but predictable.

I read that KitKat will be optimized for phones with low specs, so I assumed Galaxy Nexus would recieve the update... I highly doubt that it is due to performance, so you may be right. Let's see what the ROM community cooks together.

Damn, I was really hoping to get this update on my Galaxy Nexus to see if it would help with my phone at times taking 10 seconds to display any icons on the home screen after I hit the home button. I understood dropping support for the Nexus S when they did since it was a single core processor with 512MB RAM. It must be the case as stated previously in the comments that it is too much work for too little return to optimize for TI's defunct ARM design. Too bad Google chose them for the flagship Nexus phone when the platform ended up being so short lived.

Edit: Maybe I should review before posting nonsensical auto-corrected words

Edit2: OK, Google has come out and said it is simply a case of them sticking to their official 18 month support window, and the Galaxy Nexus is about 24 months old. Oh well, it was a good... well, it was an OK phone while support lasted.

RAM (or memory) is one of the most expensive parts of a phone, and now Android can run comfortably on the 512MB of RAM devices that are popular in much of the world, bringing the latest goodies in Android 4.4 within reach for the next billion smartphone users.

and then they leave GNex-users out in the cold, with their 1GB of RAM.

Less than two years of support for their own device.

Gimme a break. Gimme a Kit-Kat.

EDIT:Why would it matter for the GNex to get 4.4 if TI left the ARM-market or not? The chips are already out there, and Google has all the doc and drivers it probably needs anyway.

I have a Galaxy Nexus on Verizon as my work phone and I'm still waiting on 4.3 to arrive. Given how poorly Verizon has handled the GNex its no wonder Google hasn't done another Nexus or Google Play experience phone on them. Great network, but absolute control freaks that ruin what should be the flagship Google experience.

Nope, not the case, all Nexus devices come with lots of binary blobs. The Nexus moniker is more about business partnership between Google and the OEM than about any particular openness on the close-to-hardware side of things.

Given how poorly Verizon has handled the GNex its no wonder Google hasn't done another Nexus or Google Play experience phone on them. Great network, but absolute control freaks that ruin what should be the flagship Google experience.

This just feels like Google don't want to, for whatever reason, support hardware older than two generations. I'm sure CyanogenMod et al will have the backs of GNex owners, though.

Don't bet on it. Cyanogenmod does good work (I'm running a 10.2 nightly on my Galaxy Note II LTE) but they can't do the impossible. If the drivers, source and such aren't there or aren't compatible, there's no way it's going to run, or at least run well.

That said, the GNex is probably going to be okay. It's not guaranteed, but it's pretty likely.

Pretty sad when you consider the iPhone 4, which just got the iOS 7 update, was released 6 months before the Nexus S (let alone the GNex).

I was going to say this. And while the iP4 doesn't run all that well with iOS7 (it's not terrible, but you can feel it struggle on occasion) you have to commend Apple for their effort. Just about every other non-enterprise OEM would leave their customers out in the cold.

I wonder if Google is dropping Galaxy Nexus support as a way of ending the headaches of dealing with Verizon? They are probably contractually obligated to support Verizon's version as long as they release updates for other versions, so dropping support for all of them is likely an easy way to end having to deal with it anymore.

Pretty sad when you consider the iPhone 4, which just got the iOS 7 update, was released 6 months before the Nexus S (let alone the GNex).

Not really, it might be more of a hard choice for the user. While iOS 7 did come to iPhone 4, it had to have bits trimmed out making it not a complete iOS 7, and add to the fact that it makes the phone quite noticeably slower and maybe updating older devices with newer OS's isn't always a great thing.

While I can't say much about the GNex, I know I wouldn't have wanted the update on my Nexus S.

I wonder if Google is dropping Galaxy Nexus support as a way of ending the headaches of dealing with Verizon? They are probably contractually obligated to support Verizon's version as long as they release updates for other versions, so dropping support for all of them is likely an easy way to end having to deal with it anymore.

Good point. They could have given it more emphasis by giving the KitKat update to only the unlocked version. This would have put more pressure on Verizon.

That sounds like a reasonable explanation except I can't figure out why Verizon would demand such a thing. I mean, they hate software updates. Why would they put it in their contract that Google has to supply them?

Pretty sad when you consider the iPhone 4, which just got the iOS 7 update, was released 6 months before the Nexus S (let alone the GNex).

Google stopped selling the Gnex 9 (edit more like 11) months before apple stopped selling the iphone4. In fact, apple stops giving updates to their products after they've stopped selling them for a year, same as google.

Pretty sad when you consider the iPhone 4, which just got the iOS 7 update, was released 6 months before the Nexus S (let alone the GNex).

Google stopped selling the Gnex 9 months before apple stopped selling the iphone4. In fact, apple stops giving updates to their products after they've stopped selling them for a year, same as google.

First off, this is factually incorrect on two levels as Apple still sells the iPhone 4 on select markets and will not be supporting it with iOS 8 which will come out well under a year after the last iPhone 4 is sold.

Second, you are deliberately avoiding the real point here- buy an iPhone 4 on day one in 2010 and Apple will give you FOUR years of support including being able to run the latest OS, most of the latest APIs, ALL the latest security updates, and many new software features. Buy a Nexus on day one and you get that level of support for two years and a bit. What's worse is that the Nexus level of support is about the best you can get on Android. Trying to equate Apple's support with Google's is just plain wrong- no reason not to give credit where credit is due.